Bomb blasts kill 18 in India

HENRY CHULos Angeles Times

Published Sunday, September 14, 2008

NEW DELHI -- Multiple bomb blasts rocked this densely populated city Saturday evening, killing at least 18 people and injuring dozens more in the worst terrorist incident to hit the Indian capital in nearly three years.

The serial explosions struck packed marketplaces and public areas across Delhi, from its older, northern precincts to the affluent, newer south. At least two bombs blew up in Connaught Place, the city's most famous commercial district: a circular, colonnaded arcade of shops and restaurants erected during the British Raj.

As is routinely the case in such attacks here, Indian authorities immediately cast suspicion on Muslim extremists. A militant outfit known as the Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the blasts in an e-mail sent to Indian news organizations before the blasts, warning that India was soon to receive "the message of death." The assertion could not be verified.

The group was little known until several months ago, when spokespeople purporting to represent it claimed to be behind at least two deadly bombings: one in the tourist destination of Jaipur in May, which killed more than 60 people, and another in the city of Ahmedabad in western India, in which dozens of people died.

Saturday's apparently coordinated attack, a string of explosions that went off as darkness fell and the streets were crowded, was the worst to hit Delhi since a multiple bombing in October 2005. In that incident, more than 50 people were killed on the eve of one of Hinduism's most important festivals, leading to government declarations that Islamic radicals were attempting to sow religious strife.

The Indian Mujahedeen is linked to a banned Islamic students' group. But little concrete proof has tied the students' organization to specific attacks, and bombings throughout India in the past year have failed to ignite any communal violence in this predominantly Hindu land.

The first explosion bloodied shoppers and passers-by in the neighborhood known as Karol Bagh, toward the northern part of Delhi. Two more blasts shook Connaught Place, and at least one more struck a marketplace in southern Delhi popular with well-heeled Indians.

Local news agencies said that two other bombs were defused before they could be detonated. One was reportedly placed near India Gate, an imposing archway commemorating India's war dead located about a mile down the street from the presidential palace.